Oh the snowflakes inside and out

I decided quite a while ago I wanted L’s first Christmas to be magical. Even though I know he won’t remember he can still look back at the photos. So in my Pinterest search I found quite a few DIY ideas that would be really low cost and fun to make.

I decided to start with something simple that I could decorate the windows with and it wasn’t overly Christmasy since I was starting in the beginning of November. Now when I started this Minnesota was still having fairly good weather (50s and 60s is pretty good for the beginning of November), since finishing we have now dropped to the single digits and have, at the very least, 6 inches of snow. I’m sorry Minnesota I may have cursed us by making…snowflakes. Oh but what pretty snowflakes they are.

Now when I was a kid we always made snowflakes out of paper and for the most part the whole class had pretty similar looking snowflakes. I was imagining mine would look much the same as they did then. Pinterest saved me again from furthering the cookie cutter snowflake. I first found the idea of using coffee filters on this  site. You can obviously find coffee filters just about anywhere, I got mine at Target for less than $1 for 100.

Now on the site it’s not super detailed on how to fold and she gives a very basic example of some that she made. I folded mine in half three times, I will say it is a lot easier to get the fold even if you flatten the coffee filters. It took me a bit to realize my snowflakes weren’t being cut evenly because of the fold so I grabbed two old textbooks and put three or four filters in between. Much better after that.

The designs and ideas on the above site didn’t really grab me, especially after seeing many gorgeous paper snowflakes. So I decided to adapt them for the coffee filters. Underneath each picture is the site where I found them and then I will show you the ones I made so far. I mostly free hand cut from the designs and even made a few by just cutting. The fun thing about most of these designs is that you can flip them for either the fold or the other side.

Designs I have found and used:

Life is Sweet

Sweet Home The site is not in English but has so many designs you could go snowflake crazy and you really just need the pictures anyway.

Lapappadolce you can switch this one to English but as I said above not really necessary. Very detailed pictures.

UsefulDIY.com  If you search snowflake on the site there are many more designs.

Lumehelbed 

Now I will show you how I do mine. I decided to use the following pattern found on Life is Sweet:

First fold is just in half (I didn't flatten my coffee filter for this one as you will see)

In half again

And last fold in half

Then you cut. I free hand cut while looking at the picture, as you will see mine do not always turn out exactly like the pattern but that's ok. If you really don't like one you can either hide it among the others or start over.

Here is my patio door covered in snowflakes (ignore the dog nose art, I refuse to wash the outside of windows in winter and hey they should be able to join in the artistic fun too).

I hope you all enjoy making snowflakes as much as I did and hey show them off here too, I would love to see others!

Update: This project and many others from other sites can now be seen on It's So very Cheri